Guild Wars 2: Heart Of Thorns Launch Week

Happy Halloween everyone! For anyone following me on Twitter and/or Instagram, you’ll probably have noticed that in every spare moment this past week I have mainly been playing Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns. I can’t believe that EGX Rezzed was all the way back in March, where I first got my hands on the demo… waiting after that little taster felt almost impossible, and every beta weekend between pre-purchasing and launch only fuelled my hype. I’m not kidding when I say I couldn’t sleep last Thursday night – I’ve not been this excited since I was a kid at Christmas time. Dan and I got up earlier than usual so we could have breakfast together and watch the launch livestream, and of course, we both wore our foil print Heart of Thorns shirts to work on Friday…

After torturous work meetings, our friend and original guildie Matt picked me up and we headed home to bake and impatiently wait for Dan to finish work… Of course, we’d stocked the house with beer and snacks and we ordered dirty fat pizzas on Friday night. There’s no time to cook with a jungle to explore and a story to continue! SO MANY QUESTIONS TO ANSWER. THIEVES. DRAGONS. EGGS. JUNGLE MAGIC. MISTS. EXPLOSIONS. TRAITORS. AIRSHIPS. ARGHHHHHHH.

The two things that really stood out for me initially were a) the new music – it’s incredibly epic, and a bunch of it gets stuck in my head something rotten; and b) Tarir, The Forgotten City. When we first came to Tarir the three of us were absolutely gobsmacked. Guild Wars 2 is an amazingly beautiful game, but Tarir is something else, it’s on a whole new level. Running around Tarir, using the new skills like gliding and jumping mushrooms to navigate, seeing The Exalted up close… Tarir is quite possibly my new favourite location in game.

After working through a good chunk of the new story on Friday night/Saturday morning, we took a break to make our Norn Revenant triplets. Here’s my lady, Silke Brahamsdóttir. I’m really enjoying dual swords on her – Revenant feels really fun and super badass to play. I love my Guardian to pieces, never really got on with my Warrior, but I think my Revenant is going to see a good amount of play time.

On Sunday night, our guild the Church of R N Gezuz [RNGZ] claimed our guild hall, The Gilded Hollow. It is absolutely enormous with the same beautiful shimmering look as Tarir, and we’re working really hard on upgrading our buildings now. It feels so good to see our guild emblem (the pink and white unicorn, haha!) flying on the banners. We’re not a particularly big guild, and when I first started playing at launch, there was only really Dan, Matt and myself. We three-manned a whole lot of content, often getting absolutely ruined in the process – when repairing cost money! To see that we’ve grown to around 40 members now (and welcome any new players that need a home in the game) gives me the warm and fuzzies.

We completed the story on Monday. After a frustrating first attempt in the early hours of the morning (hindered by some bugginess) we managed to smash it the following day. All I have to say on the matter is take that you melted kaiju. Another instance of totally epic music there though, with what felt to me like a distinct Ghost In The Shell vibe.

I can’t forget to mention Halloween now, can I? We’ve been absolutely spoiled for content since last Friday, as my favourite in game holiday has been in full swing. I’ve been farming trick or treat bags in the labyrinth, running the mini dungeon and zooming around on a broom dressed as a witch. I’m still crossing my fingers that I’ll get lucky with drops and land myself a Nightwing bat pistol! I’d love to make the Nightfury shoulders, but unless I get really lucky, I’m going to have a whole lot of gold saving ahead of me – and the guild hall upgrades are eating all my materials and money for the time being. I can wait. As the saying goes, slowly slowly catch a fluttering bat shoulder piece…

I’m thoroughly loving every aspect of this expansion so far – and I know that I’ve barely scratched the surface! If anyone wants to try Guild Wars 2, the base game is now free to play – if you fancy it, drop me a message in game at glitterbat.2813! And for anyone wondering, no this is not a sponsored post, I just love Guild Wars 2 (and the original!) so much that I can’t help but push it! 😀